Wolf in the Fold
by Roger Johnson
Summary: ."Nobody gets one over on me. Or on my grandson, right?" Scott nods eagerly. "You do what you have to to get by, Scott. That's the way it is." A background story for Scott from Total Drama: Revenge of the Island.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I'm really nervous about posting this? I don't know. Let me know what you think. I'll be continuing this for at least another chapter, but if you're interested in more, let me know :)

* * *

The salesman fiddles with the clasps of his briefcase uncomfortably in the dining room. The kitchen windows are open and there's a breeze running through the house, ruffling the dusty lace curtains that drape picturesquely behind the strange man. The curtains haven't been touched in years, not since Grammy died. Pappy never goes into the dining room, not even to talk to the accountant, Mr. Bill. They always stay in the living room and sit on the couch and spend more time talking about the other farms than Pappy's.

The salesman is wearing a heavily starched brown suit and Scott can see the sweat starting to turn his white collar grey. It's a hot July day. Scott isn't allowed to go in the dining room because Pappy said he was doing grown-up business, but Scott's crouched on the staircase just out of sight, listening intently. His hands clasp the railing tightly as he leans forward, eager to find out what's going on. He can't see Pappy, but he can hear him pacing back and forth on the other side of the room.

"It's the first offer you've received on the house, and it's been on the market for almost five months," the salesman says finally, after a long silence. Pappy sighs, and Scott frowns. He doesn't understand what they're talking about.

"It's too far below the asking price," Pappy replies. Scott hears the rustle of his clothes as he stops walking back and forth and leans back against the wall.

The salesman makes a face. "The house is in complete disrepair. I don't think you're going to get a better offer. And if you let it keep sitting there, the fees are going to start to add up. The sooner you get rid of your son's house, the better."

Scott pictures his house in his head. He knows that's the house they're talking about, now; Pappy is daddy's daddy. The house is a long car ride away, in a city. It has stains all over the walls, but they're not Scott's fault, even though daddy blames some of them on him. There used to be bugs living in the basement. It was Scott's job to kill them, or they would get into the food.

Scott doesn't live in that house anymore, he lives with Pappy. Daddy's gone. Pappy says he's gone forever, but it's hard to imagine forever, because it's a long time. Scott's used to Daddy being gone, even though sometimes when he hears the screen door slam or a truck on the road he thinks that it might be Daddy coming back for him. Pappy says that now Daddy's dead, he won't come back. When Scott asked if it was just like Mommy leaving, his pappy got quiet and after a while he said, "a little like that, yeah. But it's not the same."

Scott doesn't mind living with Pappy. He helps Pappy do the chores and Pappy treats him like a grown-up. Except for today, because Pappy won't let him go in the dining room.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" Pappy asks, and he sounds sad. Scott starts to feel worried the way he always did when it got dark and Daddy wasn't home yet. He tightens his hands around the railing, even though the wood digs into his hands. "We're struggling, Mr. Carter," Pappy says, and Scott can practically feel the way Pappy's shoulders slump even though he can't see it. Pappy always stands up straight, because he says bad posture is a sign of bad breeding. Scott's hands are sweating. He doesn't like it when Pappy gets quiet, or sad. He especially doesn't like it when Pappy starts to sound like an old man, because even though Pappy's hair is grey, he's still strong and he can lift a lot of things, not like an old man.

"The farm's in trouble," Pappy says. "We can't compete with commercial growers who've moved into the area. I wouldn't make this your problem, but... the boy's mother is sick, on top of everything else. She needs someone to take care of her, and I'm the only person who cares enough to try. It's an expense I wasn't prepared for... on top of buying groceries and medicine for her, the cost of gas is up again and she lives pretty far. I don't know how I'm going to make ends meet if we don't get this house sold... I don't know if I can take an offer that low without having to sell the farm, too."

Pappy's voice sounds strained, and Scott watches the salesman grimace and fidget even more. "I... I don't know what I can do," the salesman says, but the look on his face shows that he's making a decision. "Well, okay. I think I can help you out. There's a few strings I can pull."

Pappy moves into Scott's line of sight, and he has a big smile on his face. He shakes the salesman's hand gratefully. "Thanks so much, Mr. Carter. I appreciate that so much." The salesman mumbles in response, and rises from his seat. The two older men wander out of the dining room into the front doorway, Mr. Carter getting ready to leave. Scott hastily gets to his feet and pretends that he's just coming down the stairs. He doesn't want Pappy to know he was eavesdropping.

"Come say goodbye to Mr. Carter, Scott," Pappy says when he sees his grandson. Scott goes to him and they step out onto the porch together, waving as the salesman gets into his sedan and drives away.

They stay on the porch together in silence for a few moments.

And then Scott says, "But my mom's not sick, Pappy."

Pappy looks down at Scott sharply, frowning. Scott meets Pappy's blue eyes and realizes that he just gave away his secret. He shifts from one foot to the other uneasily, but he doesn't break eye contact. Pappy's the one who looks away first. "No, she's not sick," he says slowly, his bushy eyebrows furrowed slightly. "But he was tryin' to stiff us. Nobody gets one over on me. Or on my grandson, right?" Scott nods eagerly. "You do what you have to to get by, Scott. That's the way it is."

* * *

Scott's pet dog is named Alan. He's a border collie like the other farms have, except he wears a spiky collar and he knows how to talk.

Alan isn't real, Scott just imagined him. Scott's teachers at school say Scott is attention-starved and causes disruptions because wants people to notice him more. He acts bad because it's the only way he knows how to make people pay attention to him. Pappy makes Scott come with him to the parent-teacher interviews because he can't stay home alone, even though Scott insists Alan is old enough to babysit.

Scott hates going to school, and he hates learning and he hates his teachers and he hates the other students. The teachers and the other kids hate Scott too. He gets in trouble all the time and no one wants to play with him at recess, and when they play tag he's always it and no one gets off tee and when he quits because it's no fun everyone calls him a baby.

If he was allowed, Scott would spend all day with Alan and Pappy doing farm stuff and exploring. Alan and Scott are going to be explorers when they grow up, and Scott has known it ever since he watched _Indiana Jones_ and read _Treasure Island_ and _The Hobbit_ and _King Solomon's Mines_. All the kids in Scott's class like _Harry Potter_best and want to become wizards, because that was the book they read together out loud. But Scott isn't going to go to school anymore, he's going to get a gun and kill lions and dig up treasure and fight a dragon.

(Scott has read the fourth _Harry Potter_ book and Harry fights a dragon, but Harry Potter doesn't get any treasure or meet dwarves and he still has to do tests and go to class. Scott is going to build a boat like the _Dawn Treader_ and sail to the end of the Earth. None of his classmates are invited.)

Scott's Pappy never gets mad at Scott. Pappy is proud that Scott is his grandson and teaches him how to run the farm. Pappy says he's raising Scott the proper way, not like his dad. That's why Scott reads so many books. They're the books Pappy had on the shelf, and he told Scott that when he was a boy he didn't watch TV, he read books. Pappy's favourite is _The Story of the Treasure Seekers_, and he read it out loud to Scott every night before bed for the whole month of August. Now it's one of Scott's favourites, too.

Pappy sometimes teaches Scott lessons Scott doesn't understand. Once, Pappy tried to teach Scott about moral relativity because Scott's teacher said that lying was never okay. "The truth is subjective, Scott," Pappy said with a serious face. Scott wasn't sure what relativity or subjective were. Pappy said he'd understand some day.

What Scott _is_ starting to understand is that the real world and books weren't really that alike. No matter how much Scott searches for a magic portal or a long-lost buried artifact, he can't find one. So instead of being whisked off on a high-flying adventure by a band of merry comrades, he has to keep going to school. His only consolation is that all of his classmates have turned eleven and none of them have been accepted into Hogwarts, either.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time he's fourteen Scott's old enough to figure out that his dad had a pretty serious drinking problem. He knows that on the night he died, dad was drunk off his ass and driving. He's seen the picture from the newspaper article – Pappy wouldn't let him see it, never says a word about the accident or the drinking or any of it – but he looked it up online, and there it was. An old station wagon he remembers vaguely wrapped around a street light, the front of the car crumpled like tin foil and the windshield in shattered pieces all over the road. It makes him sick to think about.

When he was younger, social workers wanted to talk to him a lot about living with his father. Pappy didn't like them visiting the house, so they called him into the office during school. They might as well all have been the same woman: despite the colour of their hair, whether it was brown or dyed blonde with their black roots showing, they had the same lined face, big eyes, and quiet, careful voices. Scott hated them, though, the same way he hated all adults in his life when he was younger (other than Pappy) and was much more likely to try and run away from them than to patiently answer all their prying questions. Despite his resilience, or maybe because of it, when the guidance counsellor calls Scott down for a visit when he's fourteen the file she's holding is way thicker than any of the others on her desk. It's got is name scrawled messily on the side tab, and she's looking at one of the papers within it.

She smiles at him in what she probably thinks is a welcoming manner. Scott is blown away by the fact that women like her are the standard employees in this position. Even if he wanted to, he probably wouldn't want to tell her about his "problems." She looks… delicate. And he knows that if he mentions certain topics, or says things like "I don't _care_" she's going to frown that upset little frown that every social worker owns, and he'll feel guilty for upsetting her. It's not like she can do anything, anyway.

She's concerned that he's not making friends. Scott bristles immediately, feeling defensive. It's not his fault people don't like him. He lives on the outskirts of a small town and he's been going to the same school with the same people since kindergarten. They decided back then that he was weird and they weren't going to be friends with him. There's nothing he can do about it. They're not going to change their minds, and he doesn't want them to. He's not pathetic enough to grasp at some sham of a friendship offered by a kid who's bullied and ostracized him since he was five.

It's not affecting his marks. That's his ticket out of this office. The guidance counsellor frowns her upset frown, but Scott can't muster up any guilt. He's angry and the room is too hot. She tries to get him to talk some more, but he refuses. It's not affecting his grades, so she can't keep him here. He imagines that she chose her job based on touching Hollywood movies – maybe Good Will Hunting, or Antwone Fisher. She's been dreaming since she chose her major of the day she meets with a troubled young person and manages to make an astounding breakthrough, and she helps the person through their hard time, and she gives them their life back, freeing them from the traumas of the past. Scott isn't going to throw her a bone. She doesn't know anything about him or his "traumas" and if he has anything to say about it, she's not going to.

She dismisses him with a sigh, and he takes his time going back to class. If he times it right, he'll return just before the bell rings.

* * *

When Mothers Against Drunk Driving does their annual visit to the middle and high schools, Scott asks to go to the bathroom and leaves the school. He's never seen their three-screen seventy-five minute movie about why you shouldn't try to drive yourself home after you get smashed at a party. He doesn't ever plan to.

None of his teachers ever mark him down as absent those days. He doesn't know how they know, but they do. He doesn't care. On those days his stomach feels sick and he doesn't care.

* * *

In the summer a cicada buzzes loudly from a branch of the crab apple tree in the front yard. The sun is hot, and Scott and Pappy have come home from the farmers market having sold a few things of their own, and picked up a few things from the neighbouring farms. They load the fridge with fresh berries and fresh milk, and then they sit on the porch together. Scott loves Sundays. He and Pappy wake up before sunrise to start loading bags of dirt into the pick-up truck, and Scott collects all the money he's earned in the past week just in case he sees something he wants to buy.

Pappy drives them to the next town over, an hour away, and they set up their stand in the earlier hours along with everyone else. Scott watches Pappy do business with other farmers and with townspeople and tourists. He usually takes care of watching the lockbox with all the money in it, and with helping people who need their dirt carried. "Let my strong young grandson help you carry that," Pappy says jovially to little old ladies. Scott has grown strong. And he's happy to take over this particular responsibility from Pappy, who is getting way too old to be lifting fifty pound bags of soil.

After the first few hours, usually their stock is running low. They do good business, especially in the spring and summer when people are excited to plant gardens and grow grass. In the fall and winter most of their sales come from exporting dirt to stores and buyers in the US. They usually pack up their stall before the other farmers do, loading the leftover bags back into the truck and putting a tarp over their wooden table. Then they do their own shopping for the week. It's late enough that most of the best stuff has been bought by early birds, but still early enough for most of the stalls to still be open and to have goods worth purchasing. The grocery list changes each week, and usually Pappy decides what to get on a whim – after all, you never know when you're going to find that all the strawberries are brown on the bottom; you can't really plan for that kind of thing. Scott loves to watch though, because Pappy haggles like a fiend and almost never accepts the original price listed by the seller. Sometimes Pappy lets Scott have a turn to practise his skills, which Scott does eagerly. It's satisfying to walk away with something at a bargain price.

Afterwards, when they're back at home and the truck's unpacked and they're sitting on the porch, they listen to the cicada buzz in silence. "How's school?" Pappy will always ask, after a long time. He knows how school is doing already, because he and Scott always talk about his day over dinner. Pappy knows that Scott hates his classes, hates his teachers, and hates his classmates most of all. But Scott still answers the same way he does every week, "It's fine."

Then they don't talk again for a while.

They've been sitting on the porch for almost an hour when Scott turns to his grandfather hesitatingly. "Pappy, can I ask you something about my dad?"

Pappy looks surprised by the question, the way he always does when Scott brings up his father. His mouth twists into an unhappy frown. But he says, "Of course, Scott."

Scott bites his lip thoughtfully, trying to think of the best way to phrase the question. "Why did he drink?" He asks, finally. He watches his grandfather's face, knowing that Pappy won't be pleased that Scott knows about his father's habit. Pappy has always made a point of only saying good things about his father. He's been protective of Scott in that way.

He tries to give an honest answer anyway. "You don't… become an alcoholic overnight, for just one reason," he says. Scott is surprised. He's never heard Pappy admit that his father's drinking was a problem. "For one, once you've got alcoholism in your genes, like your daddy did – and you, too – it becomes a big risk. And he didn't really care about taking risks. His grandma, your Grammy's mom, she grew up with an alcoholic father. So it runs in that side of the family. And then, your daddy was a never really happy guy. Maybe he had depression, I don't know. I never thought about that kind of thing when I was raising him. He was a little bit like you; he never really got along with kids his own age when he was growing up. And then when he was older he finally made friends, but they were all heavy drinkers. He just went along with it. And he never even realised, not even in the last moments of his life, that he ever had a problem."

Pappy got quiet again, and his face was so sad that Scott didn't want to say anything else. But he had a question he was itching to ask, and eventually he couldn't hold it in. "Were you disappointed in him?"

The silence stretches for so long that Scott starts to think that maybe Pappy didn't hear him. Or that he's decided to ignore the question completely. "It's a hard thing to say," comes the eventual reply. "I am, and I have been, and I always will be so deeply saddened that your daddy got sick. But he was my son. I couldn't be disappointed in him. If anything, I'm disappointed in myself. Really, really disappointed with myself. I should have put my foot down. I should have… I don't know. I shouldn't have let him die." He stops abruptly, looking at Scott sternly. "That's enough of that topic." He says, and abruptly stands. He cooks dinner and does the crossword at the kitchen table and doesn't say anything to Scott for the rest of the day. The next day, and every day after that, they pretend that they never had that conversation.

* * *

In September Pappy has a stroke, and after that things are different.


End file.
